So you want to know about the Formidine Rift? (Part 3)

[Acus]

Chapter 8 in the hospital; page 488 of 1206 in my ibooks ecopy.
"“Don’t tell no one, but I got as far as the Formidine Rift, not many folks can say that! No one has gone past it and lived to tell the tale.’
‘The Formid …?’
‘Edge of the galactic arm. Take a line from Reorte to Riedquat to the edge of the arm and … keep going.’ The woman grimaced. ‘Stars thin out, you can see the whole galaxy just hanging there. I took a fancy to going exploring after I lost …’ she paused, a sadness creeping across her face, ‘… had some time to spare. Quiet for the most part, until …’
‘Until what?’
‘Let’s just say there was some serious out there, stuff you wouldn’t believe. No really – no one believed me, said it was all a fabrication. I had no proof you see and they edited my memory afterwards. Ah, it’ll all come back to bite them one day, it’s all there in the Imperial databanks somewhere - and they thought the Thargoids were trouble …”

Excerpt From: Wagar, Drew. “Elite: Reclamation.” Fantastic Books Publishing, 2014-05-29T23:00:00+00:00. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright."

I think Old Woman fits to those missions. She had some sort of motivation - loss of someone, we have almost her citation, we know she was in the rift those times. Altought no hard evidence - and as Jaiotu mentioned some timelines dont match (with old drive type she wasn't able to back to bubble in 2017, if she was in the rift.)

What she describes as strange things that happened, can refer to "black-ops" type mission: people died in accidents, hyperdiction, strange signals - maybe much more we don't know yet.

And we know that something very bad happened to her - maybe even gone so crazy that she ejected in witch space ...

What about witch space by the way ? I definitelly see more yellow clouds here in EAFOTS - How does it look in HW , conflux, bubble?

 

[Assimilator1]

If anyone is keeping records, I just finished scouting the GL-Y E2 6 -173° meridian, flying from -90 to 0 (-89...-88...-87..etc...) at a height of 5km. It took me a cumulative total of 6 hours of actual flying time and i burned through 1/3 of my 40T fuel tank. It was night throughout the whole flight and 5km seemed to be the highest i could fly while still being able to see the ground directly underneath me. I'm flying an Asp Exp with a boost speed of 440m/s. I flew at that speed for 95% of the flight. I could not spot anything interesting, aside from 6 POIs (didn't stop to look). I'm flying in VR and the glare from the cockpit instruments didn't help (at lowest setting). What really bothers is the light coming from the panel right under the eyes (the fake lights and buttons between the throttle and joystick). Those don't seem to dim at all. The 3 nav panels firing up when looking right, left and down are a real pain. There should be a way to disable those when doing planetary searches in VR. They don't just obstruct your view, they temporarily blind you at night (even at the lowest setting available).

You can disable those panels in the graphics options, it's called something like UI focus head look

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Sounds good. We can make up for the sheer size of the planet in CMDR numbers...an organized search would be great, although unlikely...at least for now..

Don't suppose you'd be able to make a co-ordinate spreadsheet?
(Mind you, it sounds like we'd need 7-8 enteries per degree longitude gl-y!)

 

[Matzov]

Thanks.

so, 'had some time to spare'... that could mean anything. I can see how you extrapolated a loss from that, but even if true, it doesn't mean she went on her lonesome. With time to spare, she may have signed up to one of the missions knowing it would take a long time to complete.

However, I suspect whether she was, or was not, an official part of the mission is a moot point. I suspect the more pertinent issue is what she experienced, and whether that tallies with the logs (lights, strange sounds, and so on) - and who she told about it.

 

[Red Anders]

Anybody who wants to avoid a headache can swerve this post but...

If you're quite certain of your maths then you raise a good point, and we have a problem, and the problem's worse on the eafots gl-y planet as it's radius is over 7000 Kms!!
What longitude seperation would we need for the 2 planets to be able to search properly at 5kms?

Since you asked...

At work at the moment so I can't start working stuff out in detail. The maths in my post is rough for which I make no apologies, but solid - it's simple stuff actually although it might not seem it at first glance. If someone wants to cross check it and do fully accurate calcs here's the way I did it:

Derive circumference at equator from radius using 2πr
Divide by 360 - number of km on the ground between each degree of longitude at the equator

visble area on the ground was calculated using pythagorus (!) to calculate the width of the visible area on one side of the ship and then doubling it, as follows (with terrible ascii art lol)

5 |\ 10
...X

5km height, 10km visual range measured from ship to intersection with ground, 10^2 = 5^2 +X^2

X = 8.66km

That's the distance visible on the ground from a point under your ship to the extent of a 10km visual range at a height of 5km. Since you can see out of both sides of your ship, double it to get 17.3km. That's the width of a strip of ground centered on your ship within which you could see any object which is visible at a maximum range of 10km whilst flying at an altitude of 5km.

So going back to the start, if the gap between longitude lines is 48km and the effective search area's width centred on your ship at 5km altitude is 17.3km, you have 2.77 such strips within a single degree on the ground. To allow for poor visiblity at the very edge of the 10km visual range, you might as well call that 3, so to search a single degree of longitude on the Hawkings Gap planet AT THE EQUATOR you'd want to search down X.165, X.500 and X.835 where X is your chosen longitude line. Roughly lol.

Don't forget this is at the equator. The longitude lines are closer together the closer you get to the poles, so it becomes less of an issue.

If anybody wants to work out the same for the big planet in the rift, be my guest but as I said last night my rough figures suggested that at the equator you'd need to subdivide a degree of longitude into 8 to get full coverage.

I'm not working out the convergence as you approach the poles to see exactly when you could start to step those divisions in. Again it's fairly simple maths, just a hell of a lot of it lol. Probably also worth pointing out that you could do all the above in a spreadsheet very quickly and set one up that could automatically calculate the splits. I did the above with a calculator and a pencil. Old skool.

 

[G4RY]

Just made it out here now, at alpha base at the moment, going to beta soon.

So has anyone worked out anything that could narrow down the search? or are we simply just looking around systems on luck? sorry if this has been covered.

 

[kenworth]

Just made it out here now, at alpha base at the moment, going to beta soon.

So has anyone worked out anything that could narrow down the search? or are we simply just looking around systems on luck? sorry if this has been covered.

So far it appears to be either brute force or blind luck.

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Anybody who wants to avoid a headache can swerve this post but...

Since you asked...

At work at the moment so I can't start working stuff out in detail. The maths in my post is rough for which I make no apologies, but solid - it's simple stuff actually although it might not seem it at first glance. If someone wants to cross check it and do fully accurate calcs here's the way I did it:

Derive circumference at equator from radius using 2πr
Divide by 360 - number of km on the ground between each degree of longitude at the equator

visble area on the ground was calculated using pythagorus (!) to calculate the width of the visible area on one side of the ship and then doubling it, as follows (with terrible ascii art lol)

5 |\ 10
--
X

5km height, 10km visual range measured from ship to intersection with ground, 10^2 = 5^2 +X^2

X = 8.66km

That's the distance visible on the ground from a point under your ship to the extent of a 10km visual range at a height of 5km. Since you can see out of both sides of your ship, double it to get 17.3km. That's the width of a strip of ground centered on your ship within which you could see any object which is visible at a maximum range of 10km whilst flying at an altitude of 5km.

So going back to the start, if the gap between longitude lines is 48km and the effective search area's width centred on your ship at 5km altitude is 17.3km, you have 2.77 such strips within a single degree on the ground. To allow for poor visiblity at the very edge of the 10km visual range, you might as well call that 3, so to each a single degree of longitude on the Hawkings Gap planet AT THE EQUATOR you'd want to search down X.165, X.500 and X.835 where X is your chosen longitude line. Roughly lol.

Don't forget this is at the equator. The longitude lines are closer together the closer you get to the poles, so it becomes less of an issue.

If anybody wants to work out the same for the big planet in the rift, be my guest but as I said last night my rough figures suggested that at the equator you'd need to subdivide a degree of longitude into 8 to get full coverage.

I'm not working out the convergence as you approach the poles to see exactly when you could start to step those divisions in. Again it's fairly simple maths, just a hell of a lot of it lol. Probably also worth pointing out that you could do all the above in a spreadsheet very quickly and set one up that could automatically calculate the splits. I did the above with a calculator and a pencil. Old skool.

So to cover all lines of longitude it would require something like 360*3, or 1080 pole-to-pole surveys? Not sure how long FD thought this would take, but to even approach a 50% chance of finding it you have to do over 500 surveys. Even at 400m/s it would take over 30 hours to go pole-to-pole.

 

[John Rhys]

Anyone else notice how nothing that we've found out here regarding these abandoned settlements has received so much as a mention on Galnet?

I submitted a Freelance report a few days ago but, considering that everything I've submitted since November has been ignored that's little wonder.

Considering, the Formidine Rift is probably one of the best hidden secrets, that would probably equate to having a run through Area 51 at CNN, FOX or even Russia Today. So, my guess is, it will take a very long time, until we see something about the Formidine Rift on Galnet...

 

[Red Anders]

So far it appears to be either brute force or blind luck.

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So to cover all lines of longitude it would require something like 360*3, or 1080 pole-to-pole surveys? Not sure how long FD thought this would take, but to even approach a 50% chance of finding it you have to do over 500 surveys. Even at 400m/s it would take over 30 hours to go pole-to-pole.

Not quite that bad - like I said you need to remember that longitude lines all originate from a pole, so as you get closer to the poles the space between them is smaller and you'll hit a latitude where you can in fact see the full width on the ground of a single degree of longitude. That's the bit I really can't face working out - the points at which you'd need to split your search pattern into two and then into three to cover the widening distance.

In fact when you're sat over the north or south pole, you could actually see the first 8.66km of all longitudes simultaneously. If I'm not making sense, picture a Terry's chocolate orange - the segments are thinner at the top and bottom than they are in the middle...

On the big planet out in the rift though, I'd say even trying to do it is a non-starter just because it would take so much organising to avoid duplication.

 

[Jaiotu]

Not quite that bad - like I said you need to remember that longitude lines all originate from a pole, so as you get closer to the poles the space between them is smaller and you'll hit a latitude where you can in fact see the full width on the ground of a single degree of longitude. That's the bit I really can't face working out - the points at which you'd need to split your search pattern into two and then into three to cover the widening distance.

In fact when you're sat over the north or south pole, you could actually see the first 8.66km of all longitudes simultaneously. If I'm not making sense, picture a Terry's chocolate orange - the segments are thinner at the top and bottom than they are in the middle...

On the big planet out in the rift though, I'd say even trying to do it is a non-starter just because it would take so much organising to avoid duplication.

Let's call it rich and immersive gameplay

 

[Baton]

Not quite that bad - like I said you need to remember that longitude lines all originate from a pole, so as you get closer to the poles the space between them is smaller and you'll hit a latitude where you can in fact see the full width on the ground of a single degree of longitude. That's the bit I really can't face working out - the points at which you'd need to split your search pattern into two and then into three to cover the widening distance.

Would be fairy simple if you had another pilot to help, just fly along adherent longitudes with same speed and you can see how far you are from each other, but that does require teamwork which is a problem here

 

[racer1]

I was experimenting with how far away you could see the Formidine Beta site from.

I was 25km altitude and the site when targeted was 45km away. It could be seen as a black dot.

Using a bit of pythag that equates to you being able to see approx 37km in either direction (left/right of you search bearing).

So from 25km up you could expect to be able to search a 75km wide width as you flew along. You could see much further obviously but the draw distance made this about the limit were you could see the base on my setup.

Supporting pics from front and side view from my asp cockpit.

Spoiler

 

[Masheikh Scytale]

Considering, the Formidine Rift is probably one of the best hidden secrets, that would probably equate to having a run through Area 51 at CNN, FOX or even Russia Today. So, my guess is, it will take a very long time, until we see something about the Formidine Rift on Galnet...

At least now we know we are looking for

Spoiler

 

[Jaiotu]

I just arrived at PRU AESCS TY-J A64-1 and am approaching the 3rd planet to begin searching using a modified CMDR Baton method. Rather than fly along latitudinal lines I'll be flying longitudinally starting at the equator and then working up along the Northern hemisphere. Longitude lines have the advantage of being equidistant from each other at all times (instead of tapering at poles and widening at the equator).

 

[kenworth]

I just arrived at PRU AESCS TY-J A64-1 and am approaching the 3rd planet to begin searching using a modified CMDR Baton method. Rather than fly along latitudinal lines I'll be flying longitudinally starting at the equator and then working up along the Northern hemisphere. Longitude lines have the advantage of being equidistant from each other at all times (instead of tapering at poles and widening at the equator).

You have that reversed....latitude lines are equidistant....longitude lines converge at the poles.

 

[Jaiotu]

You have that reversed....latitude lines are equidistant....longitude lines converge at the poles.

You know what? You're right. Reverse that

 

[kenworth]

You know what? You're right. Reverse that

I blame the names themselves....should have been called upsydownsies and sidewaysies.

 

[Gypsy12]

Hrmmm. Server restart...

Any hidden goodies?

 

[Jaiotu]

I blame the names themselves....should have been called upsydownsies and sidewaysies.

My brain flipped them because, while I'm flying along a single latitude I'm actually searching the longitudinal coordinate.

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Hrmmm. Server restart...

Any hidden goodies?

I've got some M&Ms in a drawer over here...

 

[Zeeman]

Hrmmm. Server restart...

Any hidden goodies?

I suspect that is code for:

"Whoops, we forgot to load the new assets for the new ruins sites we just posted on Galnet. We had better fix it before anyone notices, because those Cannon guys will scream and then go cry to Michael, unlike those Formidine people, who'll just take it on the chin and accept their lot... 4 months later..."

Z...

 

[Jaiotu]

I suspect that is code for:

"Whoops, we forgot to load the new assets for the new ruins sites we just posted on Galnet. We had better fix it before anyone notices, because those Cannon guys will scream and then go cry to Michael, unlike those Formidine people, who'll just take it on the chin and accept their lot... 4 months later..."

Z...

I suspect you're not far from the truth on that.